557 research outputs found
Transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals Includes the SDG Index and Dashboards. Sustainable Development Report 2019
The Sustainable Development Report 2019 presents an updated SDG Index and Dashboards with a refined assessment
of countriesâ distance to SDG targets. The report has been successfully audited for the first time by the European Commission
Joint Research Centre. New indicators have been included, primarily to refine the indicator selection on agriculture, diets, gender
equality and freedom of speech. We have also added more metrics for international spillovers, including on fatal work accidents.
A new website and data visualization tools are available (http://sustainabledevelopment.report).
Once again, Nordic countries â Denmark, Sweden and Finland â top the SDG Index. Yet, even these countries
face major challenges in implementing one or several SDGs. No country is on track for achieving all 17 goals with major
performance gaps even in the top countries on SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate
Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Income and wealth inequalities, as well as gaps in health
and education outcomes by population groups also remain important policy challenges in developing and developed
countries alike.
The Sustainable Development Report 2019 generates seven major findings:
1. High-level political commitment to the SDGs is falling short of historic promises
In September 2019, heads-of-states and governments will convene for the first time in person at the UN in New York to
review progress on their promises made four years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. Yet, our in-depth analyses show
that many have not taken the critical steps to implement the SDGs. Out of 43 countries surveyed on SDG implementation
efforts, including all G20 countries and countries with a population greater than 100 million, 33 countries have endorsed
the SDGs in official statements since January 1st, 2018. Yet in only 18 of them do central budget documents mention the
SDGs. This gap between rhetoric and action must be closed.
2. The SDGs can be operationalized through six SDG Transformations
SDG implementation can be organized along the following Transformations: 1. Education, Gender, and Inequality; 2. Health,
Wellbeing, and Demography; 3. Energy Decarbonization and Sustainable Industry; 4. Sustainable Food, Land, Water, Oceans;
5. Sustainable Cities and Communities; and 6. Digital Revolution for Sustainable Development. The transformations respect
strong interdependencies across the SDGs and can be operationalized by well-defined parts of governments in collaboration
with civil society, business, and other stakeholders. They must be underpinned and guided by the principles of Leave No One
Behind and Circularity and Decoupling of resource use from human wellbeing.
3. Trends on climate (SDG 13) and biodiversity (SDG 14 and SDG 15) are alarming
On average, countries obtain their worst scores on SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life on
Land). No country obtains a âgreen ratingâ (synonym of SDG achieved) on SDG 14 (Life Below Water). Trends on greenhouse
gas emissions and, even more so, on threatened species are moving in the wrong direction. These findings are in line with
the recent reports from the IPCC and IPBES on climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection, respectively.
4. Sustainable land-use and healthy diets require integrated agriculture, climate and health policy interventions
Land use and food production are not meeting peopleâs needs. Agriculture destroys forests and biodiversity, squanders
water and releases one-quarter of global greenhouse-gas emissions. In total, 78% of world nations for which data are
available obtain a âred ratingâ (synonym of major SDG challenge) on sustainable nitrogen management; the highest
number of âredâ rating across all indicators included in the report. At the same time, one-third of food is wasted, 800 million
people remain undernourished, 2 billion are deficient in micronutrients, and obesity is on the rise. New indicators on
nationsâ trophic level and yield gap closure highlight the depth of the challenge. Transformations towards sustainable landuse
and food systems are required to balance efficient and resilient agriculture and forestry with biodiversity conservation
and restoration as well as healthy diets
Health Status transitions in community-living elderly with complex care needs: a latent class approach.
ckground: For older persons with complex care needs, accounting for the variability and interdependency in how health dimensions manifest themselves is necessary to understand the dynamic of health status. Our objective is to test the hypothesis that a latent classification can capture this heterogeneity in a population of frail elderly persons living in the community. Based on a person-centered approach, the classification corresponds to substantively meaningful groups of individuals who present with a comparable constellation of health problems.
Methods: Using data collected for the SIPA project, a system of integrated care for frail older people (n = 1164), we performed latent class analyses to identify homogenous categories of health status (i.e. health profiles) based on 17 indicators of prevalent health problems (chronic conditions; depression; cognition; functional and sensory limitations; instrumental, mobility and personal care disability) Then, we conducted latent transition analyses to study change in profile membership over 2 consecutive periods of 12 and 10 months, respectively. We modeled competing risks for mortality and lost to follow-up as absorbing states to avoid attrition biases.
Results: We identified four health profiles that distinguish the physical and cognitive dimensions of health and capture severity along the disability dimension. The profiles are stable over time and robust to mortality and lost to follow-up attrition. The differentiated and gender-specific patterns of transition probabilities demonstrate the profiles' sensitivity to change in health status and unmasked the differential relationship of physical and cognitive domains with progression in disability.
Conclusion: Our approach may prove useful at organization and policy levels where many issues call for classification of individuals into pragmatically meaningful groups. In dealing with attrition biases, our analytical strategy could provide critical information for the planning of longitudinal studies of aging. Combined, these findings address a central challenge in geriatrics by making the multidimensional and dynamic nature of health computationally tractable.This research was funded through a PhD dissertation grant supplied to the first author by the Quebec Network for Research on Aging
Verification of the observer property in discrete event systems
The observer property is an important condition to be satisfied by abstractions of Discrete Event System (DES) models. This technical note presents a new algorithm that tests if an abstraction of a DES obtained through natural projection has the observer property. The procedure, called OP-Verifier, can be applied to (potentially nondeterministic) automata, with no restriction on the existence of cycles of 'non-relevant' events. This procedure has quadratic complexity in the number of states. The performance of the algorithm is illustrated by a set of experiments
Constructing Integrable Third Order Systems:The Gambier Approach
We present a systematic construction of integrable third order systems based
on the coupling of an integrable second order equation and a Riccati equation.
This approach is the extension of the Gambier method that led to the equation
that bears his name. Our study is carried through for both continuous and
discrete systems. In both cases the investigation is based on the study of the
singularities of the system (the Painlev\'e method for ODE's and the
singularity confinement method for mappings).Comment: 14 pages, TEX FIL
Kinematic characteristics of elite men's 50 km race walking.
Race walking is an endurance event which also requires great technical ability, particularly with respect to its two distinguishing rules. The 50 km race walk is the longest event in the athletics programme at the Olympic Games. The aims of this observational study were to identify the important kinematic variables in elite men's 50 km race walking, and to measure variation in those variables at different distances. Thirty men were analysed from video data recorded during a World Race Walking Cup competition. Video data were also recorded at four distances during the European Cup Race Walking and 12 men analysed from these data. Two camcorders (50 Hz) recorded at each race for 3D analysis. The results of this study showed that walking speed was associated with both step length (r=0.54,P=0.002) and cadence (r=0.58,P=0.001). While placing the foot further ahead of the body at heel strike was associated with greater step lengths (r=0.45,P=0.013), it was also negatively associated with cadence (r= -0.62,P<0.001). In the World Cup, knee angles ranged between 175 and 186° at initial contact and between 180 and 195° at midstance. During the European Cup, walking speed decreased significantly (F=9.35,P=0.002), mostly due to a decrease in step length between 38.5 and 48.5 km (t=8.59,P=0.014). From this study, it would appear that the key areas a 50 km race walker must develop and coordinate are step length and cadence, although it is also important to ensure legal walking technique is maintained with the onset of fatigue
A knowledge-based approach to multiple query processing
The collective processing of multiple queries in a database system has recently received renewed attention due to its capability of improving the overall performance of a database system and its applicability to the design of knowledge-based expert systems and extensible database systems. A new multiple query processing strategy is presented which utilizes semantic knowledge on data integrity and information on predicate conditions of the access paths (plans) of queries. The processing of multiple queries is accomplished by the utilization of subset relationships between intermediate results of query executions, which are inferred employing both semantic and logical information. Given a set of fixed order access plans, the A* algorithm is used to find the set of reformulated access plans which is optimal for a given collection of semantic knowledge.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28071/1/0000514.pd
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